Is your Management Information Relevant to you?
Do you find yourself looking at reports which don’t help you make decisions?
Is the really valuable information hidden in the depths of the reports?
Changes over time
As the competitive environment the business operates in changes over time, the focus of your management reporting needs to change with it. What were once useful insights can become irrelevant. Information that business needed to have weekly to make decisions is now less important, and actually detracts from decision making
Over time the burden of producing old repetitive reports increases, as does the time the recipients waste reading them to draw a conclusion that no action is needed
We frequently see business which regularly produce monthly, weekly or even daily reports, but often there is very little value in them and little to no action is taken using them
The production of those reports can be a complex, challenging and expensive task. But
without driving any confident decisions then really what is the value?
Examples of irrelevant and costly reporting
Regular standard reports issued to people who cannot influence any outcomes using the data
e.g. a weekly sales report going to a HR dept
Reports containing useful information, but not providing any context to identify whether this information is good or bad
or not giving it to the right people at the right time
Exceptional performance (positive or negative) not made visible and not shared
with the people who can use it make a difference
Relevance has a timeliness aspect to it, its no good getting perfect information
after the opportunity has passed to make a difference to a decision
What would happen to the business if some of those reports were not produced?
Questions to ask to find opportunities to save time and effort
People
Have the people who provide you with reports actually asked if you still need them?
Are your people all busy servicing the standard reporting of the business, is there capacity for continuous improvement
Do you seem to have a backlog of outstanding questions you need answers for?
Processes
How much manual effort is required to produce the reports?
Do you have exception based reporting in place with triggers and alerts?
How are varied priorities handled to service business needs?
When was the last time you carried a review of reporting output?
Try this exercise in your business
Get the reporting team together and ask them to bring examples of all of the key reports to a meeting room
It usually needs a large room!
Lay them out on the desks, and look at the sheer volume, then ask the question, which of these are useful?
For BI reports and dashboards, bring printouts, screenshots
Ask how long this output takes to produce and scribble notes on the first page of each one
Invite the recipients to the room and ask their opinions
It can be a very quick and easy way to free up capacity to focus on more value adding insights, or to focus on areas of inefficiency
Repeat this exercise from time to time, you will be surprised how much time it can save
This is an example of one of the things we do in our management information health check
Our proven management information health check analyses these areas of people, process and technology to give you an honest assessment of your current situation, along with ideas that can be implemented to make the best of what you already have
Find Out about our health check
Management Information Health check
If you think your management information could be better get in touch and lets find ways to make your reporting more relvant
Timeliness, Accuracy, People, Processes, Technology, and much more
